Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

He cleared his throat. “Well, let me see.” The overhead lantern teetered on its gimbals. Rain drummed on the carriage-roof, and Julian’s breath hung visibly in the chill air. “God created the world—”

“That’s starting a long way back,” Calyxa said.

“Perhaps it is; but do you want to hear this story or not?”

“I beg your pardon. Continue.”

“In the beginning God created the world,” Julian said, “and set it turning; and let events transpire without much in the way of personal intervention. He stage-managed a few tribal disputes, and arranged a misguided Flood that cost many lives and solved very few problems; but in the end He decided the human race was too corrupt to be salvaged, and too pathetic to destroy, and so He stopped tinkering with it, and left it alone.

“But humanity, on the whole, was conscious of its fallen condition, and went on petitioning God for unearned gifts or the redress of grievances. All this badgering, in God’s eyes, amounted to a lament for lost innocence—a nostalgia for the abandoned paradise that was Eden. ‘Make us innocent again,’ humanity cried out, ‘or at least send innocence among us, to serve as an example.’ “God was skeptical. ‘You wouldn’t recognize Innocence if it handed you a calling card,’ He said to humanity, ‘and Goodness exceeds your grasp with the regularity of clockwork. Look for these things where you find them, and leave Me alone.’ “But the prayers never ceased, and God couldn’t indefinitely ignore all that grief and lamentation, which lapped at the walls of Heaven like a noxious tide. ‘All right,’ He said at last, ‘I’ve heard your noise, and I’ll give you what you want.’ So He fathered a child by a virgin—in fact a married virgin, for God was fond of miracles, and for a woman to be simultaneously a wife, a virgin, and a mother seemed like a miracle with compound interest accrued. And so in the fullness of time a child was born—innocent, bereft of sin, invulnerable to temptation, and good-hearted down to the very marrow of him. ‘Make of him what you will,’ God said grimly, and stood back with His arms folded.”

(I tried to evaluate Calyxa’s reaction to these blasphemies. She kept her face motionless, but her eyes were attentive and unblinking. The rain came down stiffly, and the wheels of passing carts made a muted sound in the dusk.) “A quarter-century or so went by,” Julian continued. “And eventually that child of God was returned to his Creator—scorned, insulted, beaten, humiliated, and finally nailed to a splintery cross and suspended in the Galilean sunshine until he died of his wounds both physical and spiritual.

“God received this much-abused gift by return mail, as it were, and He was ferociously scornful, and said to humanity, ‘See what you do with Innocence? See what you make of Love and Goodwill when it looks you in the eye?’ And so saying He turned His back on Mankind, and determined never to speak to the human race again, or have any other dealings with it.

“And even this,” Julian said, “might have been a useful lesson, taken as such; but Man misunderstood his own chastening, and imagined that his sins had been forgiven, and put up effigies of the tortured demigod and the instrument on which he had been broken, and marked the event every Easter with a church service and a colorful hat. And as God made Himself deaf to Man, so Man became deaf to God; and our prayers languished in the dead air of our cavernous churches, and do so to this day.”

The carriage was silent in the aftermath of this cruel and frankly blasphemous narrative. Sam sighed and stared out into the rain. The vehicle’s springs creaked as we bounced over wet cobblestones, a sound that reminded me of the creaking rope where Job Blake had been hung. Julian looked at Calyxa boldly, if a little apprehensively, while she pondered her response.

“That’s a fine story,” she said finally. “I like that story very much—thank you, Julian. I hope you’ll tell me another one some day.” She essayed a smile. “Perhaps I’ll make up one of my own, now that you’ve shown me how.”

It was Julian’s turn to gawk in astonishment. He slowly took the measure of Calyxa’s sincerity. Then he grinned—perhaps the first genuine grin I had seen on him since the Saguenay Campaign.

“You’re welcome!” he said. Then he turned his grin on me. “You married well, Adam! Congratulations!”

“Oy,” said Sam, in the cryptic language of the Jews.

The future defied our expectations. The future always does, as I’m sure Julian would say. “There’s no predicting Evolution,” he used to say, “either in the long or the short term.”

Still, the shock of our arrival in New York City can hardly be overestimated.

This is what happened.

Our train, although an Express, slowed at every switch yard, and the journey lasted all night. Calyxa and I had a stateroom to ourselves. We were awake until the early hours, and consequently slept past sunrise. We did not see anything of the City of New York until the porter knocked at the door to announce our imminent arrival.

We dressed quickly, and joined Sam and Julian in the passenger car.

I was sorry I hadn’t arisen earlier, for we were already well within the boundary of Manhattan. I will not detail its wonders here—those will emerge in the later course of the story. But I knew something exceptional was going on as soon as we rolled into the columned interior of the great Central Train Station. Visible through the rain-streaked windows of the passenger car were many bays and depots where trains could embark or dispense passengers, and the one we approached was crowded with people in all kinds of colorful dress, many of them carrying signs or banners. A wooden stage had been erected, and a band played patriotic songs. The exact details were hard to distinguish through the smudged and grimy glass, but the mood of excitement was unmistakable.

We asked a passing porter what the occasion was, but he didn’t know. “Someone famous in from the battle-front,” he said, “probably.”

Someone famous! It would be ironic, I thought, if we had come all this way with General Galligasken for a fellow traveler; but there was no hint that such was the case. We didn’t know which passenger was being honored until we stepped out onto the platform. Then a ticket-taker pointed at us—at Julian, specifically—and the band promptly struck up a march.

“Dear God!” Sam said, paling, as he read the signs and banners held aloft by the crowd—and I read them, too, and my expression must have been equally gap-jawed.

WELCOME THE HERO OF THE SAGUENAY CAMPAIGN! said one.

NYC POLICE FIREFIGHTERS SALUTE THE CAPTOR OF THE CHINESE CANNON!—another.

And a third said, simply, HURRAY FOR CAPTAIN COMMONGOLD!

Sam trembled as violently as if he had looked at the jubilant crowd and seen, in its place, a firing squad.

Julian was even more bewildered. He opened his mouth and couldn’t muster the strength to close it.

At that moment a white-haired woman came to the fore of the crowd. She was not young, nor especially thin, but her manner was vigorous and purposeful. She was clearly an Aristo—she was dressed expensively and gaudily, as if she had marched through a milliner’s shop and a tropical aviary and emerged with bits of both places adhering to her. She carried a wreath of flowers on which was laid a paper banner bearing the words WOMEN’ S PATRIOTIC UNION OF NEW YORK WELCOMES CAPTAIN COMMONGOLD. The wreath was so extravagant that her face was all but concealed by it, until she lifted it up with the intent of settling it around Julian’s neck.

Then she got a good look at the intended object of all this adoration, and froze as if she had been struck by a bullet.